Hot Jobs Employers Find Hard to Fill
Less Glamorous, Less Skilled, Blue-Collar Openings Remain Vacant
Oct 9, 2009
A quick look at the Spartan Staffing website and it’s easy to see how many of the positions this job placement firm that offers services in eleven states has available in traditionally less skilled fields. Jobs in food service, landscaping and driving, usually filled by individuals who are trained on the job, seem to fill their web page.
Enter the job title “driver” and “nationwide” into the search windows at Monster.com and the search brings back over 5000 hits. The term “food service” nets about 4600. At Careerbuilder.com the same search results in over 21,000 driver and over 14,000 food service postings in the last 30 days alone. So why are there so many openings in these fields?
Growing Need for Trainable, Dependable Employees
According to Melanie Holmes of Manpower, in an MSNBC.com article "Where will the jobs be in 2012?", the hardest jobs to fill right now are those that “can’t be outsourced or turned over to robots.” She cited positions such as sales representatives, truck drivers and mechanics as being some of the toughest to fill.
A big part of the reason may be that these types of positions are looked upon as being more mundane and less attractive especially to younger, college-educated job seekers. After all, who wants to attend college for four years only to graduate and drive a truck or operate a drill press?
The fact is that many young people attend college to pursue a degree in a field that interests them and that they hope will lead to a better paying career. The benefit of a college education is often immeasurable in career fields where specific skills sets are required to be successful, such as medicine, science and the law. In addition, according to an August 2009 article in USA Today, more young people than ever before are gravitating toward degrees and careers in sustainability.
However, there are many jobs that don’t require more than on-the-job training or technical college to qualify. That doesn’t make these jobs any less valuable, just different. Unfortunately, not as many people are interested in working in positions that tend to be more physically demanding rather than mentally challenging.
The Current Status of Blue-Collar Jobs
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the supply of low-skilled workers has declined since the 1970s. And while most employers today require more skills than in the past – 65 percent require vocational or technical skills -- there is still a need for employees willing to do some of the more mundane tasks –15 percent of employers seek untrained employees.
A January 2009 article, “Today’s Hardest-to-Fill Jobs” posted at Careerbuilder.com lists ten of the toughest jobs for recruiters to fill according to a study from Manpower, Inc. Among those listed are mechanic, truck driver, delivery driver, laborer, and machine operator. The biggest problem: too often job seeker skill sets don’t match with current job openings.
On the other hand, what is great about many of these more physically demanding jobs that no one seems to want is that they very often offer the right skill sets to fill green-collar jobs. And as more and more businesses move toward a more sustainable future a background in construction or mechanics may offer many a blue-collar worker a new career in sustainability.
What it all comes down to is that there are jobs out there; job seekers just need to know where and how to look to improve their chances of finding work. It may not be easy or even glamorous to take a blue-collar position, but it may be the best choice in the long run.
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